National Disaster Prevention Day – Mayor Chu hosts an anti-earthquake exercise
To help children acquire sufficient knowledge about disaster prevention, Mayor Eric Chu hosted an anti-earthquake exercise at Fengming Elementary School during the morning of 9/13/2013 for the 2013 National Disaster Prevention Day, and he also used instant video conferencing with the President Ma Yingjiu who was at Shuyi Elementary School in Taichung.
Chu indicated that 9/21 was the National Disaster Prevention Day, and the occurrences of earthquake in Taiwan were very high. Since earthquake was different from other kinds of disasters, and it usually suddenly happened, if people had not been appropriately trained, an earthquake could have caused huge damages.
Chu reminded schools of helping children acquire correct knowledge about disaster prevention, and teaching students to familiarize appropriate positions for covering when an earthquake happened, so their lives can be saved, and associated damages could also be minimized.
For today’s exercise, President Ma used video conferencing with Fengming Elementary School at New Taipei City, Shuyi elementary School in Taichung and Da Ciao Junior High School in Tainan to observe the whole procedure. The emphasis of the exercise was to take cover within one minute when an earthquake came, so students needed to do squat, take cover, and hold firm with the principles of no talking, no running and no pushing; also, they would be led by teachers to safe spots.
The Education Department represented that this exercise was implemented cooperatively with the Ministry of Education and the Central Disaster Prevention and Response Council, the Executive Yuan to mimic crustal plates drifting and moving in Chuanghu, and with the Central Weather Bureau’s Earthquake Warning System to remind schools of the upcoming earthquake, students were led by teachers to take cover immediately. All-level schools at the city, totally 336 schools, would simultaneously run the exercise for National Prevention Day at 9:21 a.m. on 9/13/2013, and it was hoped that this training could build stronger disaster prevention foundation.
